Hasta La Gadget!

Could this be a case of Baidu’s browser in Chrome’s clothing? The Wall Street Journal seems to think so and the Chinese company isn’t exactly dismissing the KIRF claims. Announced back in April, the recently beta-released Baidu Browser brings a “sleek, stripped-down interface” eerily reminiscent of Google’s web-surfing entry to an otherwise Internet Explorer 6-loving Chinese population. The copycat similarities don’t just end in the looks department: there’s also an app store, fast-tab functionality and familiar menu icon placement. In its defense, the company claims its 30,000 plus free app offerings, in addition to China-specific entertainment features are enough to set it apart. Sure, this may seem like a case of the Asian search giant that doth protest too much, but it’s the company’s desire to drive traffic to its own engine that has us seeing Google.

[Thanks, Hardy]

Baidu Browser tips hat to old Steve Jobs’ quote, steals Chrome’s special sauce originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Vegans are going to be super-conflicted by this one. Researchers at Beijing University’s College of Life Science and Technology are pioneering a four-legged creature friendly method for cranking out the 300,000 tons of gelatin produced each year. Their solution: people. Well, not in the Soylent Green sense. No, the process in question here takes “human gelatin genes [and inserts them] into a strain of yeast [producing] gelatin with controllable features.” Sound appetizing? It might, if you want to avoid chowing down on “Mad Cow” tainted gummy worms at the cinema. Alright, so maybe these Chinese scientists are signaling the sensationalist red alert a bit prematurely — it’s just too bad Charlton Heston isn’t around to witness this bit of life science imitating his art.

[Image credit via Film Critic]

Continue reading Human-derived gelatin spares the livestock, confuses vegans

Human-derived gelatin spares the livestock, confuses vegans originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whoa, Nelly — this one’s not going to sit well with a certain sect. While the Chinese city of Chongqing has been planning this initiative for some time, we’re just now starting to understand the sheer magnitude of what’ll be built over the next two to three years. Cisco and HP — two names that are no doubt familiar to those reading this page — are apparently in cahoots with the nation in a way that overshoots prior expectations by some amount. According to figures gathered by The Wall Street Journal, a whopping half-million surveillance cameras are being shipped over to keep watch across the city, with the awkwardly-named Peaceful Chongqing project giving the government unprecedented views of its citizens.

Critics are wondering why Cisco and HP aren’t being held responsible for whatever China ends up doing with this equipment, but the loophole here is a fairly obvious one; while it’s definitely not kosher for US firms to ship fingerprinting equipment to China, shipping everyday technology like cameras isn’t taboo. Yet, anyway. As you’d expect, both Cisco and HP seem confident that it’s not their responsibility to pay attention to what happens to the devices they ship, and if it’s something you’d like to immerse yourself in, those links below are there to help.

500,000 surveillance cameras to oversee Chongqing, China originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When it wanted to increase its search market share in the US, Microsoft sought out a partnership, resulting in a Yahoo-branded engine with Bing-flavored results. So, it seems natural that the company would look for a similar deal in China, the world’s largest market, where the company only manages a presence of around one-percent of search. This time, however, Microsoft’s managed a deal with the number one search engine, Baidu, which currently lays claim to three-quarters of the Chinese market — far greater than Google’s 20-percent or so. Baidu and MS announced a deal this week that will put Redmond in charge of English searches on the site. No money changed hands with the deal — Baidu gets advertising revenue, Microsoft gets a larger slice of China’s search pie, and we get an excuse to do an image search for Steve Ballmer on a Chinese search engine.

Microsoft, Baidu strike China search deal originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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China’s control over the rare earths market hasn’t faced too many challenges over the past few years, but that may be changing, thanks to a major discovery in Japan. Geologists say they’ve uncovered expansive new deposits of rare earth minerals, buried within a seabed some 20,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean surface. Research leader Yasuhiro Kato estimates that the deposits contain anywhere from 80 to 100 billion metric tons of rare earths, which, if commercially viable, could pose a serious threat to China’s global hegemony. Supply shortages and aggressive Chinese export controls have combined to raise global prices in recent years, much to the chagrin of manufacturers who rely upon the metals to produce smartphones, tablets and a wide variety of other gadgets. But with analysts predicting a rare earth surplus within the next few years and Japan’s mining industry now poised for a potential resurgence, the outlook is certainly looking a lot brighter.

Japanese scientists discover massive rare earth deposits, China bristles originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jul 2011 21:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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